Easy -- sort of

Tomorrow I'm flying to Hawaii for a much-needed vacation, so today might be my last day to get in a solid run for a couple weeks. I'm planning on bringing all my running gear and running while I'm there, but I don't know what the conditions will be like, so there are no guarantees. My flight leaves at 11 a.m. tomorrow, so I might be able to get one last run in before I go, but again, I'm not counting on it.

So when Chas said he was looking for a running partner this morning, I decided I'd join him. Unfortunately for me, today was Chas' tempo day, while I was supposed to be taking it easy recovering from yesterday's run. I decided, since I wasn't sure what kind of quality I'd be getting in Hawaii, to go ahead and try to stay with Chas as long as I could.

We headed out at a relatively easy pace, around 8:30 miles, but this was just Chas' warm-up. After about 3/4 of a mile, he took off like a rocket, and it was all I could do to keep up. After a half-mile or so, I think Chas realized he needed to slow down a bit or he wasn't going to make it, so thankfully we settled in on a pace I could maintain a while. Mile 1 ended up at an 8:08 pace, but it was more like a quarter-mile at a 6:45 pace and the rest at 8:30.

Mile 2 was a little more reasonable (from my perspective): 7:20. But at this point it was quite clear to me that I wasn't going to be able to stay with Chas for the whole run. He was on a mission, and my mission had already been completed the day before. After another quarter-mile, I let him go and took a bit of a short-cut because I would be doing strides at the end of the loop. From here on out I just eased things back, a little slower each mile: 7:53, 8:17, 8:28. I wanted to be relatively fresh for the strides. I hit the track and couldn't remember whether I was planning 4, 6, or 8 strides. It was a no-brainer: do 4! As it turns out, I was scheduled to do 8, but I figure I got some speed work in during the first couple miles of today's run, so that's probably fine. The strides felt a little rough, probably because my legs were still a bit beat up after yesterday's tough workout. I coasted in to the finish and met up with Chas, who had had a great run, his fastest 5-mile tempo to date at a 7:30 pace. Nice job, Chas!

Details of today's workout are below: